Detroit Red Wings talk about protection from injuries

DETROIT – Many of the Wings saw the Achilles tendon laceration Ottawa’s Erik Karlsson suffered Wednesday by the skate blade of Pittsburgh’s Matt Cooke. And again attention turned to protecting their bodies from injuries like that.

“We should all have Kevlar shirts and socks,” Daniel Cleary said. “The Achilles one I’ve heard of at least three guys over the last four years. It just sucks.”

Karlsson will be out 3-4 months.

“Last night’s was reckless, the other ones were just unfortunate,” Cleary said. “It’s hard to Kevlar every part that’s open, but shirts and socks should be worn and even guards for wrists.”

“We’ve had our fair share of those as well in this locker room,” Niklas Kronwall said. “We should start using them, there’s no reason not to.”

Jonathan Ericsson will go back to wearing the Kevlar socks.

“I wore them then they started to give my ankles really bad sores,” Ericsson said. “They’re hard, almost like steel. I wear the sleeves now too, they’re fine with me. The socks were, too, until they started bothering me.”

Ericsson played with Karlsson on Sweden’s national team a few times.

“It seems like fluke things are happening like that,” Ericsson said. “You see legs come up all the time, flying by your head when you hitsomeone.”

“We’ve talked about this stuff here tons,” Babcock said. “The one that I can’t understand is the gloves that are two inches long and the whole wrist is showing. But it’s like visors, once you get hit in the eye. They’re big boys and they make those decisions.”

Spreading out the ice timeOne thing is becoming evidently clear to Babcock, he’s got to start limiting the ice time of his top six forwards.

“I thought they did a good job for us,” Babcock said when asked about the play of his bottom two lines in Wednesday’s overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues. “Bottom line is I’ve got to get them on the ice more. That’s my fault, not their fault, because they did good enough things to be on the ice more.”

Henrik Zetterberg had the most ice time of all skaters at 24:18, Damien Brunner and Pavel Datsyuk each we just over 20 minutes.

“I got them out there for about 10 minutes apiece, which to me isn’t enough, because I would have liked to have played that one group for sure a couple (more) minutes and I didn’t do it,” Babcock said.

Still stingsThe Wings still felt they gave two points away Wednesday night.

“We beat ourselves,” said Wings goalie Jimmy Howard, who will make his fourth straight start Friday against the Anaheim Ducks at Joe Louis Arena. “It was one of those games where we got in our own way. We pretty much handed them points. Good thing is we’ve still taken seven out of eight points.”

“We made some big mistakes that cost us the game,” Kronwall said. “I thought 2-0 we were going and then things started going downhill. We made some mistakes that we can’t afford.”

The Wings eventually lost in overtime.

“I think we just have to keep playing on our toes,” Cleary said. “We came out and started well, but once they got that shorthanded goal they started to come in waves and we didn’t. We were getting out-chanced and we didn’t get a lot of shots over the last two periods and a half.”

As for the other two, “No one’s talking about them,” Babcock said. “When they’re not talking about them its means they’re not coming along. Bottom line is we have guys who are going to put on the sweater tomorrow and we have to find a way to win.”

Mikael Samuelsson (groin) skated, but won’t play Friday.

Brian Lashoff took a slap shot off his left wrist Wednesday and said he couldn’t close his hand for a good 5-10 minutes.

“Playing through the pain right now, it’s not that bad,” said Lashoff, who added an X-ray didn’t show a break. “They wanted to make sure it wasn’t something I could hurt worse.”

Send comments to chuck.pleiness@macombdaily.com, follow him on twitter @redwingsfront and visit his blog at redwingsfront.wordpress.com